Getting started

These articles provide basic instructions for getting started with Fastly services.


Basics

These articles provide basic information and instructions for configuring Fastly services after getting started.

Content types delivered by Fastly The underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web to define how content is formatted and transmitted is…

Read more

The Fastly web interface allows you to use a web browser to log in from anywhere. If you have trouble logging in, refer to our guide on…

Read more

As a content delivery network , Fastly works by having any one of our global points of presence (POP) respond to requests that would…

Read more

Our points of presence (POPs) on the internet are strategically placed at the center of the highest density Internet Exchange Points around…

Read more

To route traffic to a Fastly service using your domain name, you must associate the domain with your Fastly service and update your…

Read more

Domains are used to route requests to your service. You associate your domain names with your origin when provisioning a Fastly service so…

Read more

Health checks monitor the status of your hosts. Fastly performs health checks on your origin server based on the Check frequency setting you…

Read more

A host , also referred to as a backend or origin , is a web server or cloud service that contains the content of your website or…

Read more

A Fastly service is a user-defined set of caching rules and behaviors for a website or application. You might create new Fastly services to…

Read more

Essentials

Essentials is a collection of guides that introduce you to core concepts essential to understanding content delivery networks (CDNs) and Fastly.

An application programming interface (API) facilitates communication between technology products and systems. It is sometimes said that APIs…

Read more

A cache is a location that temporarily stores data for faster retrieval by the things that need to access it. Caching refers to the process of storing this data.

Read more

A content delivery network, or CDN, is a network of servers distributed all across the world that work together to make delivering content…

Read more

Cache invalidation, otherwise known as purging or cache purge, is the process of eliminating content from cache ahead of when it would naturally expire or be evicted. Once content is purged, a request for that content will be retrieved from the source rather than the cache.

Read more

Web interface

These articles describe key features of the Fastly web interface controls.

The account menu provides you with access to your personal profile information and, if you have access to multiple customer accounts , an…

Read more

Located under the Observability tab in the web interface, the Alerts page gives you access to the Alerts feature, which notifies you…

Read more

The billing overview page allows you to view bill-related metrics for your account broken down by product and region over key, monthly…

Read more

The Compute page is the key area of the web interface where you access your Compute services . From here, you can access the Service…

Read more

The Deliver page is the key area of the web interface where you access your CDN services . From here, you can access the Service summary…

Read more

Located under the Observability tab in the web interface, the Domains page gives you access to the Domain Inspector dashboard, which…

Read more

The Home page displays summary information about all services associated with your account. Think of it as a dashboard where you can get…

Read more

Located under the Observability tab in the web interface, the Logs page gives you access to the Compute log tailing feature, which…

Read more

The Observability page allows you to monitor Fastly Deliver and Compute services via collections of metrics and logs. Before you begin…

Read more

Located under the Observability tab in the web interface, the Origins page gives you access to the Origin Inspector dashboard, which…

Read more

The plan usage page allows you to view your account usage metrics broken down by product and region over key, monthly timeframes. These…

Read more

The Resources page gives Compute customers access to data stores shared by your services. Before you begin Be sure you know how to access…

Read more

The Secure page gives you access to the different security products Fastly has to offer. This page appears automatically for logged in…

Read more

Located under the Observability tab in the web interface, the Services page contains two tabs that display high-level metrics for your…

Read more

The trials page allows you to view details about product or feature trials that are active or can be started. The trials page also…

Read more

Fastly provides web interface access to all of its features and functions, which are also accessible using Fastly's application programming…

Read more